Neil Patrick Harris as Count Olaf in Netflix’s A Series Of Unfortunate Events.
Photograph: Joe Lederer

Of all the high-profile non-starters of Hollywood’s franchise age, few have had as much going for them as 2004’s A Series Of Unfortunate Events, adapted from the hit children’s books by Lemony Snicket, fictional alter ego of author Daniel Handler. Costing an outrageous $140m (more than that year’s Harry Potter entry), the film brought old-school sets, costumes and practical effects to a saga already steeped in cinematic intrigue, and introduced Liam Aiken and Emily Browning – perhaps the least annoying child stars of their generation – as the orphaned Klaus and Violet Baudelaire, the series’ industrious heroes.

It coped less well however with the demands of bringing a winding narrative serialised across 13 novels to the screen. Drawing on events from the first three books, the film threw out the series’ trademark narrative asides and storytelling cul-de-sacs, and instead rearranged the material into a traditional three-act structure, pasting over the joins with a bunch of rote Hollywood action sequences. Edges thusly rounded off, the film failed to set the box office alight (it was outgrossed almost four-to-one by that Potter movie) and a planned franchise never materialised.

Thirteen years on comes Netflix’s own adaptation of A Series Of Unfortunate Events, whose debut series – available from Friday – spreads the events of the first four books over eight hour-long episodes. Spreading a presumably smaller budget over a considerably larger running time, the show’s CGI-augmented universe can often feel murky and unreal where its big-screen counterpart’s felt crisp and tangible. And as the villainous Count Olaf, who schemes time and time again to wrestle an inheritance from the plucky Baudelaires, Neil Patrick Harris turns in little more than an echo of Jim Carrey’s performance from the film.

And yet, where 2004’s A Series Of Unfortunate Events seemed hell-bent on boxing in the books’ wilder narrative instincts, Netflix’s adaptation expands out in all directions to let the saga’s freak flag fly. Written by Handler himself, the show gleefully exploits the tools of its new televisual trade to amplify the literary playfulness of its source material. And so the mysterious figure of Lemony Snicket, whose oblique narration is the defining characteristic of the books, becomes a physical presence stalking the children through each scene, while his flights of storytelling fancy are spun into some of the most narratively ambitious kids’ TV ever. Offbeat, daring and totally gettable, it’s like a Ladybird Guide To Dialectical Theatre.